Innovative and stylish fanfiction, showcasing the very best across multiple sf, fantasy & literature fandoms. Good writing in all its forms can be found here, including gen, het, slash, OCs, AUs, crossovers, future fics, humour & pastiche

'For the first hundred years or so, he'd loved her. Or as much as one could love a wife he'd only met for the first time when she was six and for the second time on their wedding day.' The Flamels' marriage, over the centuries. An unusual & surprising story, laced with a delicious dark humour. Brilliant!

'The lab was lit even during the day with torches to ward off the smoky darkness that crept in through every narrow window, every crack and crevice of the ancient fortress.' This intelligent first war novella eschews black and white for smudgy grey shades, as Snape takes his first steps towards Voldemort. It also features a chilling evocation of Azkaban

'Sometimes, if it’s an especially long meeting, he makes lines of stars down the edges of his parchment. Not the kind where they’re lines crossed like Xs, but the kind that are drawn without ever lifting the pen, from corner to corner.' An intriguing blend of the poetic and the mundane characterises this haunting war-time piece, set deep in the bowels of Hogwarts [locked to AO3 members]

Voldemort's won, the heart of London's a concentration camp & muggle-born witches must take employment where they can... The Potter fandom isn't exactly short of 'Voldemort won' dystopias, but few combine Yahtzee's solid grasp of plot, keen eye for telling detail & light touch with the angst

'Power harnessed in exactly the right way; steam forced through pistons and driving inert matter swiftly on; passion used with entire precision. That was what magic should be, and what it so rarely was.' An interesting historical casefic, which develops an excellent voice for Phineas Nigellus, the detective. The origin story for one of the most interesting magical objects in the HP-verse is a bonus

Draco copes with the absence of his father; Crabbe & Goyle cope with the absence of Draco. Precise characterisations that don't stray too far from canon, but it's the details that really make this short piece

'Opening lines are hell./"Just start at the beginning and go on till the end," is the advice one often gets. Usually from people who can’t even write a decent shopping list.' This deliciously written double portrait develops a perfect voice for Rita Skeeter, as she dishes the dirt on her time with Gilderoy Lockhart

'After the first week, he stopped putting a second cup out with the tea. A month later, he made Potter's wrought iron chair the centerpiece of a lush potted garden.' This post-War story revolves around an unusual premise which I won't spoil here, but it's the details that really make it shine

'So another sharp-tongued young Briton happened to wear the same unfashionable twenty-year-old boots as a man who had died two years, seven months, and four days ago. So he had also had cause to replace the original buckles with bronze. Funny old world.' Delphi's work is always beautifully written, but this novelette is particularly enjoyable for its subtle, sympathetic yet believable characterisation of Slughorn

'…collecting Cursed Artefacts is a registered form of madness in the Compendium of Wizarding Mental Disorders and Other Things That Make You Twitch.' A richly detailed & inventive future fic, with a broad streak of dry humour

'As reported by the Southampton Soothsayer in March of 1879, the account of the kidnapping of one Alexandra Glass, age eight, daughter to the famous Astrologist Augustus Glass, who invented the Glass-Hayburn arithmantical equation used to calculate the aural patterns of stars.' A hilarious post-war happily-ever-after romp, with asides on coincidence and fate

'Severus had taken pains to keep no personal effect beyond the functional and impersonal. The dummy frame had been left starved of memories, of letters, of childhood mementos, of any trace of his existence. At his death, Hogwarts would not be able to generate a portrait.' An interesting short on the ethics of magical portraiture. Suffers a bit from short-paragraph syndrome

'A wand is a sign of strength in England, whereas in India it is a crutch, betraying their phoren origins more obviously than their English accents. "Not here," not in India, where all magic is a call.' Parvati & Padma in India, with a rich & unexpected portrayal of quite how different Indian magic might be from European

'Monica didn’t know how long she’d been running; everything seemed to be melting around her, nothing was real anymore, nothing but the girl chasing her, her long bushy hair streaming behind her.' A dark, thought-provoking take on the fallout from Hermione's memory charm

'Mandrake grown in blood and sperm, picked before dawn, bathed in milk and honey in the cauldron.' A dark & powerful look at Dumbledore & his relationships through the lens of the premise promised by the title. Marginaliana deftly reinterprets canon events as they unfold to their inevitable end

'When he had turned eleven, it had been Aunt Muriel who'd taken him in, because she was a Prewett and had a cousin by marriage who'd been a Black, and they took those things into account down at the registry office. It had not been so bad for him.' Trio-centric triptych, set in a dystopia where Voldemort won the first war. Livesandlies creates a wonderfully detailed world where Dudley gets to shine and even Percy is sympathetic

'An iced biscuit, perhaps? Not yet, she told herself. It was so easy for a witch alone to let herself go and slip into indiscipline.' Precise portrait of Umbridge, and her particular brand of prosaic evil. 'Chilling' is an overused descriptor, but this vignette made me shudder

'Severus, surprisingly enough, hated Quidditch.' In an unexpectedly plausible move, Predatrix makes the young Snape borderline autistic; the result is heartrending, as the eleven-year-old tries to conform to Hogwarts' expectations

'The birth of a defective child is always a matter of great sadness, and it is only natural to wonder if you might have done anything to prevent it, but you must not reproach yourself. You have not caused this fault in your child by drinking farpleweed for morning sickness, by apparating soon after conception, or through excessive exposure to Electricity.' Nineveh deftly captures the true darkness of the Potterverse in this parody

'A snake, fat, twisting, and endless, wrapped around their legs. ... Its charmed stone skin crawled slowly, lazily, so slight a motion she wouldn't have noticed if she didn't know to look for it.' An exploration of wizarding sculpture, and the after effects of war, as Hermione goes on a road trip across Italy. Thoughtful & atmospheric

'"Contrary to the dearest fantasies of teenage witches, unicorn dung doesn't taste like fairy floss and moonbeams."' Enchantingly detailed picture of life at Hogwarts through Flitwick's rather unusual point of view

'I've always enjoyed the first of April. Only the most moronic of students dare try to play tricks on me, and the day offers tantalizing opportunities for embarrassing my charges.' It's a bit of a clichÉ fic, perhaps, but the Snape voice is spot on

'In what would prove to be the final days of the war, Aberforth's brother entrusted to his keeping a hide-bound book, a stoppered silver phial the size of a finger bone, and a 21-year-old boy of uncertain provenance.' Delicate & insightful joint character study, picked out in vivid details as it slowly unwinds through the seasons. Aberforth's unshowy style of magic is a treat

'Of the twelve pairs of ribs that comprise the thoracic cage, ten are attached to the sternum and two are floating, which makes Padma imagine pressing her wand to the bruised skin of someone's back and whispering Wingardium Leviosa until their bones slot into place.' A beautifully written meditation on grief & healing after the war, with interesting speculation on magical healing versus medicine

'On her thirteenth birthday, puberty did change her. But not into the beauty her mother had hoped for. It merely served to highlight the birdlike features an ordinary Veela would only let slip in real anger.' A dark fable which has that rare thing in HP fanfiction these days, a truly original idea. Well worth a try despite a few slips; English is not the author's first language

'She could tell it had been printed on their press; the B's were all slightly askance, and the letter Q turned mauve if you looked at it for long. It was unfortunate that Voldemort had seized their printing press; her father must be quite bored without it.' A delicate, thoughtful story of Luna coming to terms with her father's part in the War, which features a far more nuanced portrayal of the character than in much fanfiction

'Putting her arm around the frail shoulders, she placed a kiss on the wisps of hair, just as she'd done when they still were dark brown and sprang from a bun that always held pencils or quills to jot down a thought or a question, an idea or an hypothesis.' A poignant novelette, thoughtful & rich in detail, which moves effortlessly between the 19th & 20th centuries to tell Bathilda Bagshot's story

'She only wanted some flowers. He has an entire garden of them, after all. Full, bright blooms with stalks so thick they braid together in places.' An unusual take on more than one old trope, with a creepy child narrator, lovely symbolic weather & an ending that's just perfect. Deservedly a Harry/Draco classic, but so much more than that

'They had killed his brother's wife, and burnt their farmstead, despite every spell rooted in the land. They had brought wild wizards on their long ships, birch carrying, battle-scarred wielders of unknown curses.' A cunning meld of Ignotus Peverell's story with Arthurian myth, with a lovely folk-tale feel

'The blowjob in question took place back in the Death Eater headquarters, an ancient castle which grew, like a black and broken tooth, out of a bleak promontory on a particularly wind-bitten stretch of Scottish coast.' An atmospheric & magically inventive novelette, with Selden's usual amazing descriptive prose plus just enough plot to support the H/D romance

'Various far-fetched theories were spun as to what exactly had happened the night Draco Malfoy went out to murder Hermione Granger, and returned some hours later, to tell his father that, actually, he thought becoming a Death Eater was a rotten idea, and he'd rather be excused.' Deservedly a fandom classic: AJ Hall has had a ball with Rowling's universe. The characters are developed far beyond the two-dimensional ciphers of canon (the author's vision of Narcissa Malfoy is particularly memorable). Although the pacing occasionally flags, the light humorous tone works well and the Bond-style finale is a romp. The sequel, Dissipation and Despair, is also recommended

'Over time, Severus wondered if a wizard could draw out enough memories to leave him an empty shell, with only the most mundane of memories in his head and the ghosts of the past.' This clever novella contains one of the more inventive HBP fixes I've encountered, and also features a believable voice for Snape

'No one knows exactly how old the Library is, but legend has it that its oldest books once belonged to Rowena Ravenclaw herself. The Library’s gargoyles jeered at Nicholas Flamel when he first visited; its dragon genealogies are the lengthiest and most complete in the world.' Lovely clever story which works on multiple levels. The unusual narrator is a particular treat

HP has a multitude of minor characters. Ignipes takes Dorcas ('Voldemort killed her personally') Meadowes and gives her a death, and a life. Subtle characterisation of the nascent Voldemort, and evocative descriptive choices

'It's not easy to plump a two-dimensional cushion that's made of canvas and stiffened with paint, as Violet is well aware.' This charming & unusual piece explores the Hogwarts portraits' two-dimensional world. It's made by a fabulous voice for its Fat Voluptuous Lady narrator

'On the television, they looked smaller, and rather further away.' The integration of the wizarding and muggle worlds was never going to be straightforward. An unusual future-fic, packed with sumptuous details

'His Gran used to say that Voldemort was a silly boy in need of a very sound spanking, but that was before she Disappeared.' Among my favourites of the HP classics, this bittersweet novella is known for pulling off an unlikely pairing with grace, but at heart it's a coming-of-age story. The magical details are a real treat. A standalone prequel to Resonant's Transfigurations, it diverges from canon after PoA

'From a beetle viewpoint, the walls and fences surrounding the Dursley property looked even more formidable. The barbed wire was new, as were the 'No Wizards' signs tacked beneath the list of all the other potential visitors and miscreants Marjorie had no truck with, but neither presented her with much of a problem as far as gaining access was concerned.' Fluffyllama uses sharp details to humanise two of the least-likable women of canon, Rita Skeeter & Marge Dursley. Memorable & thought-provoking

In this unusual post-War novel, Snape is employed by goblins to investigate potions discovered in an ancient Egyptian tomb. Though a few of the plot elements failed to convince, it's worth a try for its wealth of fascinating details about goblin society & Egyptian magic

'Sirius ... walks with the consciousness of himself as an object of desire: slower than you'd expect, as though the lingering glances are catching him with soft hands, tugging and yearning against the direction of his motion.' Ineke achieves a delicate balance here, giving Sirius a much darker edge than is found in most R/S, without making Remus appear out of character. Wonderful sensual writing

'He and Potter had had to clear the room by levitating out rack upon rack of cheap port, only to spend almost an entire day dealing with the enormous wheel of cheese that had once been a diplomatic gift from the Dutch wizarding community but which had, by the time they unearthed it, become a kind of Doxy village, practically ready to claim municipal status.' This plotty casefic novella, with a side of H/D, marries Selden's usual lush descriptive prose with excellent worldbuilding & fascinating thoughts on the ramifications of portrait magic. Highly recommended

'...She hid the two new boxes towards the back of cupboard with the worst of the best-before tinned apricots and canned soups. Her wand was somewhere back there too, tucked behind a set of cracked glass phials and her old brass scales.' It's a rather darker interpretation of the Snape family dynamics than I usually enjoy, but this twisted tale gives a strong picture of Eileen's life at Spinner's End, and highlights the sheer nastiness of parts of Rowling's creation

'...History can be learned through rhythm and chronology and rises and falls – intricate patterns. People, however, have no patterns. That is one reason why they are so difficult.' This novelette develops an interesting voice for Binns, with a poignant explanation for why he clings to teaching as a ghost

'"It's the word of God, so if it says magic is bad, then it must be bad" said Amy firmly. "I mean, being a witch probably isn't a sin, because being bad-tempered isn't either. But it is if you do it. It's just a temptation I've got to live with. I don't mind if I get chucked out of Hogwarts, it wasn't my idea to come. But hopefully I'll be able to, um, witness for Christ before I do. Have you, um, you know, thought about asking Jesus into your life?"' Thoughtful & nuanced story that integrates Christianity into the Potterverse via a series of OCs. There's a lovely cameo by Minerva, too

'It's from Ollivander. He's inviting you to return your wand.' This original depiction of a wizarding tradition is a little more sentimental than my usual picks, and a touch rough around the edges, but the ending is worth the wait

'It was, without a doubt, the ugliest creature Remus had ever seen.' A simple, moving short in which the parallels between the dark creature of the story and the werewolf are ever present, but never too obvious. A favourite from Ignipes' 'Remus Lupin's Lost Years' series (accessible via this page); all are worth reading

'The wizard ... was not by any means a small man. He had, however, a collection of very miniscule attributes – small eyes, a small nose, thin little lips, and a thin little chin – that seemed to suggest he had been sketched out on parchment by a child only just learning to use a quill, who'd had very grand ideas to begin with, and who, discovering for the first time the very disagreeable runniness of ink, had splashed on a few dots for the features and then given up.' The first war, à la Vile Bodies. The Waugh pastiche provides the perfect lens to view the terrible events as they inexorably unfold, and the novella overflows with sparkling wit at the expense of almost all of its enormous cast. A wonderful achievement

'There was once a goblin smith of renown, Eretek by name, who was greatly skilled in the working of metal and unusually strong in his magic. In this he was esteemed among the goblins of his age, for none other could match the fineness and delicacy of his craftsmanship, nor the subtlety and power of the enchantments worked into the articles that he made.' The Indiana Jones-style romp of a frame story is a little pedestrian, perhaps, despite starring a most unlikely pair of investigators. Well worth a try, though, for the story-within-a-story, plus some interesting world-building about goblins

'If he does it right - twenty-five steps from the door of the Great Hall to his seat, right in front of the window, closest to the wall; room for fifteen people between his and the end of the table either way; his plate arranged into a perfect pentagon, because fives are safe numbers - if he does it right, then the images don't come.' An unusual take on Peter's long slide into betrayal, via an obsessive–compulsive disorder that never quite manages to justify his actions

'And then her sister screamed and when Petunia turned around all she saw was blue glass in the light, a strange wooden stick, and Lily's face covered in Mrs. Snape's blood...' A very dark AU, which escalates from the original premise outwards to encompass the entire wizarding world. Heretical Vision sometimes sacrifices the characters to the idea, but when the idea is as novel & interesting as this one, I'm happy to go along for the ride

'He had not spent the night out in the weather; his skin was dry and his feet clean, though there were fresh leaves caught in his hair.' A haunting, ambiguous tale where the stolen child of the title is never quite pinned down. Eileen's cameo is particularly memorable

'"Griselda" is not what all goblins call her, of course. To many of my people, she is, as we say in Gobbledygook, a haga-maga -- a witch-bitch. Or a wand-stealer. A greens-eater. A short-finger.' This unusual love story creates an interesting original goblin to explore their society and goblin–human relations

'Over the years he had come to realise that the Dark Lord's limited ability to see beyond what he expected was a blessedly exploitable blind spot, whereas Severus' streak of perfectionism was relentless and unforgiving.' Vissy weaves in & out of HBP so neatly that you're sure this was exactly what was going on while Rowling's back was turned. Worth reading for the sympathetic characterisation of Slughorn alone

'It reminded Severus of the suspicious landlady of that seedy pub in Spinner's End. Unlike the landlady, the Harpyria fed exclusively on raspberries, and the byproducts were precious.' Snape/Luna is a difficult pairing to pull off, and Snape feels a touch out of character to me. It's well worth a try, though, for the magical background alone, among the most inventive I've seen

'He would never leave the earth and reach the stars. He was mud, he was slugs, he was worms, he was maggots: worse than maggots, in fact.' A highly original piece, mixing fairy tale with modernity to (cough) magical effect

'Albus has never been one to seek the murky depths, after all, hiding his heart in the castle's stony bowels as old Salazar did his vengeance.' A perceptive character study, which wields the angst brush effectively

'Filius hesitates — Griphook has spoken Gobbledegook, and it takes a moment to shift his mind into processing it, like cracking open a book that has lain closed on the shelf for many years.' This just gets stronger & stronger as the story unfolds to its deeply satisfying conclusion. Not one for Neville fans, perhaps, as his character gets pushed out of shape by the plot, but well worth a try for the exploration of goblin culture & the thoughtful take on Flitwick

'Carroll was actually a wizard, you know. Taught at Hogwarts for a year or two, I think. Care of Magical Creatures.' Neat characterisations of all four Marauders as they pass on the torch, and the dialogue just bounces along

'The candles ... waddled after Harry in a row like ducklings, short and fluffy and dripping wax all over in their excitement at being alight and having company at last.' Worth a try for the world-building alone, with a fantastic evocation of Grimmauld Place and its secrets

'It didn't smell of anything. Not of wood, not of dyed fabric, not of greased metal, not of red paint, not of the hot steam billowing out of the engine's stack.' A complex, interesting window into a teenaged Snape's home life, anchored in unsentimental detail. In the same universe as A Rowan in Winter, also worth a try

'He kept it with him all the time, after that, and started wearing it more often than not—he'd forget he had it on, and if he was doing a shift at one of the desks, people would come by and then go away again without asking him to do anything and he'd belatedly realize they hadn't been able to see him.' Strong worldbuilding & superb characterisation of a traumatised post-War Harry who handles celebrity abysmally. The story suffers a bit from St Draco syndrome but don't let that put you off

'"How easily he has torn us to pieces, my dear."' Pogrebin is one of the many fan authors who seem to understand the implications of the Potterverse far better than its creator. I sometimes find her style a little off-putting, but this clever, thought-provoking piece is well worth a try

'Every year on her birthday Hermione made a note of the single most important thing she had accomplished in the previous year and the single most important thing she wanted to do in the next.' Insightful and subtle character study, stuffed with gorgeous details

'Eileen thinks that Spinner's End has a way of draining all colour and light from the world, leaving nothing behind but the dried husks and hollowed-out remnants of dreams.' Quietly optimistic DH coda which paints a more nuanced portrait of the dysfunctional Snape family than much fanfiction